> As a parent, I completely agree.
What's stopping you from doing this so far? Handing a child a smartphone is a decision parents can make, withholding access to a smartphone is also a decision parents can make.
What's stopping you from doing this so far? Handing a child a smartphone is a decision parents can make, withholding access to a smartphone is also a decision parents can make.
This is a worthy tradeoff if you genuinely believe social media to be as damaging for your child as you say it is.
Please correct me if any of the above is a misunderstanding.
If the above are representative, then what I believe you've overlooked here is a the much more difficult issue:
Parents have power over children, at least up to a point, and many platforms provide help with exercising that power. Apple and Google provide some means to restrict social media access which place control in the hands of parents.
Parents do not, normally, have power over other people's children. Parents can influence in-person social circles, somewhat, but without withdrawing children from all situations where they interact with other children, including school, social media's influence upon a parent's children is still very strong via the indirect route.
When a child goes to school, attends a group activity outside of school, or socialises in real life with friends outside of school, there are always children in the groups they meet who either use social media themselves or have older siblings, friends or parents who use social media themselves and who influence those children themselves.
To be clear, I'm not giving any opinion about what's proposed here by the UK government. I wanted only to object to what looks like an oversimplification that makes a false assumption that parents have a level of control and influence that they really don't.
But that doesn't stop them seeing things on social media - when they are at the park, there are always peers there that have a phone and showing TikTok videos or Facebook reels etc, so even though I, as a parent, have blocked it at home, and chosen to not give them a smart phone, they are still exposed to it outside of that.
(And to be be fair, the same happens to me in a way. I don't have any social media logins, but I still get sent links for Instagram/FB/TikTok from friends, or my wife will show me something she's seen there, so it seems there really isn't much escape from it!)
I understand parents' concerns, though I think the price in terms of civic liberties we pay for these social media bans is too high.
BTW, it's worth noting that, in the UK, parents are legally allowed to give their children alcohol, at home, from the age of 5.